A week out from what's generally expected to be the next iPhone event date and we're at the height of silly season, with all sorts of alleged iPhone 5c photos, from the real to the really fake, floating around Chinese forums and social networks. Here are a couple that have surfaced recently via 9to5Mac.

If they prove to be accurate - and it's always if until someone from Apple holds them up on a keynote stage - we're looking at pretty much what we expected them looking at. The less-expensive iPhone 5c should be a variant of last year's iPhone 5 with similar internals but new polycarbonate (plastic) rear shells in red, green, blue, yellow, and white. (Want black? Go high end iPhone 5s.)

What's particularly interesting about these photos, again if they prove to be accurate - is the packaging. Unlike all previous iPhones, which came in boxes, these show the iPhone 5c in clear plastic containers, like those traditionally used for the iPod line, including the iPod touch.

Boxes were fine for the iPhone because they were generally kept off the shelves and behind the counter or in the back-of-house. iPods, on the other hand, were often shown off in display cases. It yet another sign of the iPhone 5c being targeted at the mass market - the next billion customers getting their first smartphone, or first phone in general. And that they're being positioned not as part of the historically premium iPhone line-up, but as a continuation of the iPod touch lineup - a gateway product to get people onto the App Store and into the ecosystem.

Much like the iPad mini, if Apple can hit a lower - not low - cost for a top quality product, they'll get people for whom the flagship iPhone is ideal in every way but price tag. It'll increase the addressable market, but not put Apple into the no-margin space, which they hate.

Reader comments

Ok, this is just ridiculous. Apple needs to crack down on these in factory leaks. They need to enforce phone searches, or take the employees phones when they come in. They are in a country that does not have the same labor laws as the US. We can make them do this. I hate how its no longer a surprise at the launch day.

Nah, it makes sense they would be black. If they were white, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between an iPod and and iPhone 5s and and iPhone 5C from the front. If they were to make them the same colour as the phones, they would never match, and the parts wouldn't be switchable. This is a mass produced phone remember.